


The Runt

by zuzeca



Category: Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Big Bang Challenge, Bittersweet Ending, Broken Engagement, Catholic Guilt, Cults, Diary/Journal, Dream Sex, Empathy, F/M, Imprisonment, Letters, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Miskatonic University, Music, Mystery, Other, Rescue, Xenolinguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 08:12:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18752473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: After an unpleasant, premature end to his pending engagement, Edward Brock travels to study at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. There he finds something highly unusual locked in his wardrobe.





	The Runt

**Author's Note:**

> After many moons of this, I am very happy to present my entry for the Symbrock Big Bang! And it's a period piece, god save me. I admit this is not the fic I set out to write for the challenge, but it is the fic I wrote, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. This is predominately comics canon based, particularly on the characterization front, but I did borrow some elements from the movieverse. Accompanied by awesome artwork by [c0rpus](https://corpus-draws.tumblr.com/post/184743614387/here-is-the-piece-i-did-for-the-symbrock-big-bang) and [Frankie](https://adumbtree-draws.tumblr.com/post/184741489332/my-symbrock-big-bnag-piece-done-for-this-story) (seriously please go look at them, they're incredible).
> 
> Brief heads up on the warnings front: while not explicit, there is a brief scene of dream sex/somnophilia in this which technically qualifies as a bedtrick, and is thus of dubious consensuality. If this is a deal breaker for you, be forewarned.
> 
> Happy reading!

“ _The mouths was like leaves and the whole thing was like a tree in the wind, a black tree with lots of branches trailing to the ground, and a whole lot of roots ending in hoofs. And that green slime dribbling out of the mouths and down the legs was like sap!..._  
_  
It came crawling up the hillside to the alter and the sacrefice, and it was the black thing of my dreams-that black ropy, slimy, jelly tree-thing out of the woods. It crawled up and it flowed up on its hoofs and mouths and snaky arms. And the men bowed and stood back and then it got to the alter where they was something squirmin on top, squirming and screaming.” - Robert Bloch, “Notebook Found in a Deserted House”_

 

* * *

 

Snow was collecting on the gambrel roofs when the truck transporting Edward Brock arrived in Arkham. He had bartered passage from the taciturn old driver with a few wrinkled bills and a bottle of off-brand liquor, all of which entitled him to the comforts of a poorly insulated trailer, strewn with straw and smelling strongly of cattle. They had taken the Boston Post Road northwards, and then continued inland along Massachusetts Route 22, turning off at last onto the Aylesbury pike and into Arkham.

Edward thanked his ferryman, and hopped to the ground, brushing straw from his clothing and valise. It was just past six in the morning according to his pocket watch, the sun not fully risen. The morning was chilly and a low pall of fog hung above the Miskatonic river.

Edward coursed the empty street beside the river, accompanied only by the sound of his soles on the cobblestones. Beyond the waterway he could just glimpse the dark forests of naked trees that quilted the landscape, a far cry from the metal and brickwork jungle of the city of his birth.

Edward’s father, Carlton, had little to say in regards to his son’s application and subsequent acceptance to Miskatonic University. He merely scratched away at his barrister’s books while Edward made his fumbling case in favor of expense and quality, and then signed the tuition cheque.

In fact the only person who had commented was Father Shelnut of Our Lady of Saints, the church at which Eddie frequently found solace when the silence in his own father's house became unbearable. Edward had stopped by for Wednesday mass, wanting to receive the Eucharist one last time before his departure. He apologized to the good father after the service for his impending absence.

“Arkham?” said Father Shelnut, when Edward had revealed his plans. “What would you want with that place, my son? There’s not a proper church for miles.”

Edward had flushed. “I am sorry, Father. My father...and with the engagement called off...it seemed the best decision at the time.”

The old priest had watched him from beneath the silver hedgerows of his brows, a frown twisting at his mouth. “It’s a rotten place, Arkham. A place stretched too thin, where the warp and weft of God’s Earth begins to tear, and all manner of ill creatures seep through.”

Edward had sighed and rubbed his face, rasping at the careless bristles left in the wake of his frantic efforts to pack and prepare. “Nevertheless, Father. Nevertheless.”

Father Shelnut had seemed to soften then, his expression turning sympathetic. “My son, sometimes I think you’d have been better for the church. That steadfast, all-consuming love in you isn’t made for mortal men.”

Edward had turned his face away, his shoulders hunched. “Not so steadfast.”

Father Shelnut had gripped his shoulder. “Never fear the doubt in the human heart, my son. Love is a painful, confusing thing. It is the strength in us to recognize its precious value for all of that, and to say ‘I will try again’.” He rummaged in the pockets of his robes and pulled out a well-worn rosary strung with Job’s Tears, and a heavy silver cross, linked with a medal of the Virgin. He had pushed the rosary at Edward. “Take it. You’ll need it in that godless place.”

“Father, I—”

“I won’t hear it. You can thank me by _using_ it.”

Edward had nodded. “Of course, Father.”

Edward stuck his fingers into his trouser pocket and rubbed at the smooth beads. The sun was climbing higher, lighting the grey roof of the clouds. He turned down West Street and headed away from the river.

The university was sandwiched between Church and College, the campus lined with brick buildings and coiling sidewalks dusted with the powdered sugar snow. Edward trudged past the gymnasium in search of the office of the registrar.

He finally found the office in a low building lurking behind the library, but the windows appeared dark and the structure unoccupied. He stood on the stoop, debating his next course of action, when a voice hailed him.

The speaker was a skinny man in perhaps his late forties, his dark hair shot with silver, wearing a pair of round spectacles. “Can I help you? The office doesn’t open for another half hour.”

“My deepest apologies,” said Edward. “I just arrived from New York and I haven’t anywhere else to go.”

The man’s eyes brightened. “Ah, you’re the city boy, come in for the new semester. Not too many of you up this way.” He fished in his pocket for a keyring. “Maybe we can open a little early then.” He grinned a thin-lipped grin. “Make some coffee before we have you fill out the registration forms.” He unlocked the door, and turned and extended a hand. “Dr. Warren Rice.”

Edward smiled and shook. “Edward Brock. And thank you, you are too kind!”

At Rice’s invitation, Edward entered the office. It was as chill inside as out, but Rice cheerfully assured him that once they got the little kerosene stove going it would be much improved. Edward assisted with the lighting of it, and spooned instant coffee from a tin into the small china cups, while Rice opened the drawers of the vast desk in search of a blank form.

They drank their coffee black while Edward filled out his information, seated awkwardly on opposite sides of the wooden monolith. Rice took the form from him and glanced over it. “Shame, hoped to see you in my chemistry lab.”

“Oh,” Edward smiled uneasily. “Never my strong suit I fear. More of a reader than a brewer.”

“No matter,” said Rice. “It takes all kinds as you well know. I admit it’s a foolish old man’s notion. I...lost a graduate student a few months back. It was nice to have someone to drink coffee with again.”

“My sympathies,” said Edward, his eyes crumpling with concern. “Was it sudden?”

“Very much so,” said Rice. He cradled his cup, looking troubled. “He was beginning to get nervous, jumping at shadows, but I never thought—” He shook his head. “Never you mind. Best to leave bad business behind.”

Edward nodded and finished his coffee. Rice set his own cup down on the desk. “I wish I’d a bit of nosh to offer you but—wait, I might have something.”

“It’s not necessary,” Edward protested, but Rice was already rummaging in his drawers. He extracted a rectangle folded in paper and offered it.

“Chocolate?”

“Do you not like it?”

“No, no, thank you.” Edward reached out and took the bar. “I was surprised is all.” He tucked the bar into his valise.

Rice laughed. “I got into the habit of keeping one around when working late in the lab. Best thing in the world to boost your spirit and soothe your hunger. And speaking of such, we’d better take you over and get your housing sorted out.”

They donned coats and scarves and trekked across the campus towards Garrison Street. Beyond the main campus were rows of tenement housing. The snow was falling briskly again and Edward trailed behind Rice, who seemed to have some notion of where he was going, stopping only once to change direction while muttering how it was best not to lodge too close to Parsonage and Pickman. He at last directed them to a wooden building on the corner of Church Street and Powdermill, set catacorner between two churches on opposite blocks.

The door was opened by an unsmiling woman with white hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, though she softened a bit at the sight of Rice.

“Professor,” she said. “What brings you out in this weather?”

“We’ve a new student in need of lodging, Marion dear,” said Rice. “Marion, this is Edward.”

She looked him over with a hint of disdain. “Room is three dollars a week. That gets you fresh linens, breakfast and dinner, an oil heater, and all the coffee you can drink. No noise, no alcohol, and _no women_. Understood?”

Edward’s cheeks were already chapped crimson, but his ears grew hot. “Understood, ma’am. It won’t be an issue.” He turned to Rice and extended a hand. “Thank you for all your assistance, Professor.”

“Of course, Edward,” said Rice. “Stay warm, and stop by the chemistry building sometime when you’re about.”

Edward carried his valise up two floors of narrow, ill-lit stairs behind Marion. She directed him to a small room at the end of the hallway. She unlocked the door and placed the key and a book of matches in his hand, told him breakfast would be served in twenty minutes, and withdrew, presumably to the kitchen.

The weak, grey winter light through the single window cast a strange pallor over the room in which Edward found himself. There was a wooden bed frame in one corner, the bed already made with white linens, a wardrobe across from it, and a small chair and table upon which sat a kerosene lantern.

Edward laid his valise upon the bed and sat beside it. He noted a couple of mouse holes chewed in the baseboard. He felt chilled, and the snow on his hair and clothing was beginning to melt, but he was cheered at the thought of breakfast and the sense of possibility that came with a new town, for all the strange, oppressive weight that seemed to hang under the omnipresent clouds.

To pass the time, he hung his small number of suits in the wardrobe. It was a creaky, ancient thing of dark, indeterminate wood, yet varnished to a high sheen. The door seemed stuck fast, but it finally yielded to his insistent blows. He hung the first of his suits upon the bar, but dropped the second upon the floor of the wardrobe. Grumbling, he bent within to retrieve it.

His fingers brushed against something cold and hard, and he gave a start. Frowning, he pushed aside his suit and stared into the darkness. There was something stored back there, a jar of some sort.

He set his shirt aside and reached for it. The glass was cold, and the texture of the metal lid bespoke rust. He stepped into the light and peered at it.

It was a half-gallon storage jar, the type often used for pickles in the general store, coated with a fine layer of dust, its lid mottled white and rust red. It appeared to be mostly full of a dark substance, the same jet shade as the ink in Edward’s inkwell. He tilted it slowly, watched the viscous liquid shift.

Was it oil for the heater? If so, it seemed far too blackened and thick to burn well, but Edward was no chemist. Carefully, he set the jar on the desk, within the weak beam of light from the window, and finished hanging up his clothes.

Despite his resolve to inquire after the strange jar, the thought of doing so slipped Edward’s mind at the sight and scent of breakfast. His last meal had been somewhere around Aylesbury the evening prior, a cold chicken sandwich purchased from a diner while the truck driver added gasoline to his vehicle. Marion had laid out a beautiful spread of warm toast with butter and jam, rounded out with boiled eggs in little cups and a silver pot of steaming coffee. There was another young man seated at the table, a handsome fellow with dark brown curls and a pronounced widows peak.

“Hello,” he said, glancing up as Edward entered. “You must be the new tenant. I thought I heard Marion up and about.”

Mindful of his manners, Edward extended a hand. “You’ve pegged me, I’m afraid. Edward Brock. Are you also a student at Miskatonic?”

The man nodded. “Harold Osborne. I work in the chemistry department.”

“Ah, you must know Professor Rice then.”

Harold smiled. “I do indeed. You also know him?”

Edward pulled out a chair and seated himself. “I am fortunate to say yes. You could say he brought me in from the cold and pointed me here.”

Harold laughed. “That sounds like Warren alright. Egg?”

“Yes please.” Edward eagerly tapped at the brown shell with his spoon. “I’m rather partial to eggs.”

“Well, you’re in luck then,” said Harold. “Marion keeps a small flock out back. You’ll no doubt have all the eggs you can stand.”

Edward grinned and snagged a slice of thick bread, buttering it and smearing it with bright red preserves that appeared to be raspberry, but upon tasting turned out to be currant. “No complaints here. Which floor do you room on?”

“The second.”

“Ah, I’m on the third. In the corner, facing Church street.”

Harold’s cup rattled slightly as he replaced it on the saucer. “...the back corner, you said?”

“Yes?” Edward paused while reaching for the coffee pot. “Why?”

Harold’s expression grew troubled. “That’s...it was, rather, Peter’s room.”

“Peter?”

Harold’s eyes flicked towards the ceiling. “Another one of Warren’s students. He...left, a few months previously.”

“Left?” said Edward. “Professor Rice indicated he’d lost a student. I assumed…”

Harold sighed and picked up his cup once more. “He’s not entirely incorrect. Peter, well no one has heard from Peter since his disappearance last fall. I’ve written to his fiancé, Mary Jane, in New York, but received no reply as of yet.”

Edward let out a breath and reached to pour his coffee. “I see.”

“Warren...well I’m certain it felt a loss, but it’s my hope that Peter is well, or at least safe.”

“I am terribly sorry to hear that such a thing occurred.”

They finished their breakfast in a much more somber mood. But as they cleaned up, Harold seemed to rouse himself, and encouraged Edward to take a cup of coffee and slice of buttered bread to tide him over until dinner time came round.

“Just mind the crumbs,” he said. “The mice have been ghastly the last few months and Marion hasn’t set out traps yet.”

Edward thanked him and did so, wrapping the bread in a handkerchief. He trudged back up the stairs to his room, then began the process of lighting the small oil heater. Once it was lit, he set his cup of coffee on top of it to keep it warm, placed the bread on the desk, and set himself to laying out his writing implements, blotter, and paper. The ink in his inkwell had seeped slightly and he grumbled as he wiped the edges with his thumb, leaving a great black stain on the digit.

Since he was already ink-stained, he decided to get a bit of writing done. His father would not care to receive a letter from him, and Anne...well, but Father Shelnut might appreciate one. He dipped his pen and began the composition.

 

_Dear Father Shelnut,_

 

_Based upon your concerns, I suspected I should notify you that I have arrived safely in Arkham. The town is…_

 

Edward frowned at the paper, rolling the words around in his head. What should he say? Arkham was well? Hardly worth mentioning. Arkham did not appear to contain so many godless heathens but he would be certain to keep an eye out?

Edward’s gaze tracked idly across the paper and blotter towards the window, alighting momentarily on the jar. He looked out across the gambrel roofs in the direction of the one church visible from his window. It had a stout, square steeple that appeared blackened on one side, as if marred by old fire.

He stared at the steeple, then froze. His eyes darted back towards the jar. Just for a moment, the barest instance of time, he thought he’d seen the liquid _move_.

After several moments passed and Edward had satisfied himself of its immobility, he crossed out his last partial sentence and returned to his writing.

 

_The people I have encountered here have been kind and willing to assist a stranger, for which I am grateful. For thus are we told to love the stranger who sojourns among us—_

 

Edward blinked. Just for a second, he thought he’d seen a white reflection off the side of the jar. But it appeared absent now, though the grey light through the window was unchanged.

Edward’s stomach roiled with strange anxiety, and he put down the pen. He stared at the jar, but it remained a jar. To his left, under the window, he heard the distinctive scrape of a mouse chewing at the insides of the baseboard.

With a sigh of annoyance at himself, Edward scooted the chair back with the hopes of sending the mouse scurrying at the noise. He peered over the edge of the table at the mouse hole, listened, and heard nothing further.

He returned to his pen, picked it up, and realized that the jar was looking at him.

Edward’s breath crystallized in his throat. The container still appeared mostly full of black liquid, but now two white pools had formed along the side facing him, like a pair of rough, pupilless, and over-large eyes. As he stared at them, the eyes narrowed and widened, a slow blink.

Edward’s pen fell from nerveless fingers. He jerked backwards, nearly overbalancing his chair, and narrowly avoided ending up on the floor.

“God in heaven!” he breathed.

The liquid didn’t move. It watched a few minutes longer as Edward gaped at it, then the pools vanished, leaving behind only endless black.

Edward breathed deeply, trying to slow his suddenly racing heart. He tried to step back, approach the situation rationally. There was something unknown in the jar, but he needed to determine definitely if it was living, or he was hallucinating. After several moments of hesitation, he picked up the jar, very carefully, and brought it up to examine it.

The liquid rippled in response, then continued to ripple even when he held the jar still. The eyes appeared, vanished again, and he slowly tracked them, re-situating his grip and rotating the jar a quarter turn.

“What are you?” he said, as if the liquid could somehow hear him. He angled the jar parallel to his face and watched the eyes shift and grow. At last, a small tendril extruded from the mass and slid up the inside of the jar.

Edward watched the movement with growing consternation, but then the tendril paused, just below the dark thumbprint pressed into the glass as a result of Edward’s mishap with the inkwell. It split, forming many, impossibly fine threads, curling and looping and folding back on itself.

Edward couldn’t breathe.

There, against the glass, was a perfect mirror of his thumbprint, the loops and whorls formed in exacting detail, delicate as black spiderweb. He gently put the jar back on the table and stared at it.

He had a living organism in here. Like nothing he had ever seen but clearly alive and capable of movement and intention. How long had it been here? Where had it come from? Who had imprisoned it thus?

The lace mirror of his fingerprint wavered, and the extrusion withdrew rapidly into its mass. The eyes vanished.

“Wait!” blurted Edward. He pressed his palm against the jar with sudden anxiety. “Wait, come back!”

The white slits formed against the inside of the jar again, opening slowly, cautiously. Edward swallowed hard.

“I’m going to try and let you out, alright? Can you understand me? I don’t know how long you’ve been in there but...would you like to come out?”

The liquid went into a roiling bubble at this and Edward flinched, startled, but mastered himself.

“Yes, alright, I’d venture that’s a yes. Calm and give me a moment. Can you calm yourself?”

Slowly, it settled back into a mirror black pool at the bottom of the jar, although the eyes remained, watching him.

Edward picked up the jar. The lid was rusted, and it felt to have been screwed on by someone driven by superhuman strength or desperation. He gripped the jar between his thighs and strained at it. “This might disrupt you a little bit but—there!” The lid budged, just enough to get it started. He set the jar back on the table and slowly unscrewed the lid.

The liquid was bubbling anxiously again, reaching for the top of the jar. Tendrils emerged from around the lip, brushing against Edward’s fingers, slick and strange, and Edward startled, dropped the jar lid.

It clanged like a gunshot and they both flinched, the liquid actually retreating back into the center of its mass. Muttering apologies, Edward set the lid aside, his hand bumping up against the slice of cold toast he’d brought up from breakfast earlier. He considered it a minute, then reached and tore off a corner.

“Here,” he said, offering the scrap of bread over the opening of the jar. “Are you hungry?”

Slowly, one of the tendrils extruded upwards. It touched the bread in almost a timid fashion, then withdrew without taking it. Edward frowned, looked about the empty room.

His valise lay open on the bed, the bar of chocolate Rice had gifted him sitting on top of the remains of his belongings.

Edward looked at the jar, then back at the chocolate bar, and considered this was not outside the realm of possibility, recent events considered.

The eyes watched him as he unwrapped the chocolate and broke off a corner. Again it reached to explore the offering.

Yet this time, as soon as it touched the chocolate, it gave a bubbling movement and grabbed at his fingers. Edward tensed, wondering if he’d made an error, but then it wound around the piece of chocolate and passed it down into the center of its mass with another tendril. A fanged maw opened in the liquid, ringed with teeth like glass needles, and frothing with phosphorescent green slime. A large tongue, easily the width of Edward’s hand, spilled forth from the monstrous mouth and scooped up the chocolate.

Edward stared at the mouth, his heart pounding, but when the maw merely closed up and the eyes shifted in his direction in an almost pleading fashion, he remembered to breathe. Carefully, he broke more chunks from the bar one-handed while the creature squeezed gently at his fingers, rippling, hydrostatic motion, like he was touching some undersea organism. Carefully, he offered it bites, whispering soft encouragement, even running his thumb across the slick flesh that ensnared his fingers, until the bar was gone.

He reclaimed his hand, which the creature released after only a token pull, and folded his arms across the desk, watching as the mass stretched and contracted inside its jar in a way that seemed almost satisfied. The eyes focused on him and Edward found himself smiling.

“Better then?” The eyes slitted like those of a contented housecat and Edward laughed softly.

A knock at the door frightened them both, and Edward found himself scrambling for the lid of the jar. He had it half covered when he realized the creature was pushing at it, grabbing at his fingers to block him from closing the lid.

“Edward?” said a voice in the hallway. Harold. “Dinner’s already being served, are you coming?”

“Yes, thank you, I’m coming!” said Edward. He lowered his voice to a frantic whisper. “Don’t worry, I won’t close it, but please, please, stay put for now? I’ll be back soon and…”

And what? They could talk? Surely the creature would have spoken if it was capable of speech. Edward swallowed and reached, deliberately petting at the anxiously waving tendrils

“I’ll be back soon, but I think it’s better you stay hidden for now, alright? Just stay here, it should be safe, and I’ll be back.”

The creature paused, but finally retreated back into the jar. Edward rested the lid atop it, but as promised, did not screw it closed. He ran his fingers briefly through his hair and hurried to answer the door.

“Everything alright?” said Harold.

“Capital,” said Edward, locking the door behind him. “What’s for dinner?”

“Wouldn’t you know it: chicken pie.” Harold smiled roguishly at him and Edward laughed.

“Lead the way then, my friend.”

Well-stuffed with chicken pie, Edward bid Harold a good night and climbed the stairs back to the third floor. The room was nearly dark, and he fumbled with the matches to light the kerosene lamp. The creature’s eyes materialized to watch him as he did so, but it made no move to exit the jar. Edward sighed, seated himself at the desk, and began to undo his cufflinks.

“I don’t suppose you have a name?” Edward rose and went about the business of preparing for bed, stripping down to his underclothes and turning down the sheets. “Or any means of communicating who you are and where you came from?”

He sat on the bed and stared back at the creature. It wriggled, lapping against the sides of the jar, but otherwise did not acknowledge his questions.

Edward rubbed his face, two-day scruff rasping against his fingers. “Well, I suppose we’ll cross those bridges as we get to them, but for now, I haven’t slept in a proper bed since Wednesday. Will you be alright if I rest?”

The eyes narrowed, as if easing shut, before vanishing completely. Eddie smiled. “Fair enough.”

He stood and removed the lamp globe to douse the flame, plunging the room into darkness. Edward stood a moment at the window, staring out at the faint glow of the snow on roof and street. Behind the cathedral roof of clouds, the shape of the waning moon was just visible, like the swinging lamp of a lost shepherd. It was an alien dark, deeper than the dark of home, in which the street lamps and window light of citizens awake at all hours created a perpetual twilight.

The sensation unnerved him, and he found himself reaching for the jar, in a foolish, almost childish gesture. He rested his palm on the icy lid a moment.

“Goodnight,” he whispered.

He couldn’t see the creature, but a moment later, there was a faint tapping against the lid. Not a frantic bid for freedom, but an acknowledgement. Edward went to the lumpy mattress with a faint smile on his lips.

In the dark, Edward dreamed of Anne.

It was a half-formed phantasm, constructed of longing and shame and pain that still felt far too fresh. He turned into the warmth of her body, seeking the lithe shapes of her, the trailing softness of her hair. He felt her hesitant hand cup his head, the prick of long nails which she’d hidden under gloves for Mass. Heard her speak his name, warm and intimate, as no one else named him.

**_Eddie…_ **

It was a fabrication, he knew. They’d never laid together, at Edward’s behest. But there had been a picnic, unseen and unchaperoned, during which they’d stretched like corpses side by side on the gingham shroud. Where he’d grasped the implicit promise of their wedding night and felt as Midas, running his hands through the golden veil of her unbound hair.

Tears rimed his closed eyelids with heat and he pressed his aching eyes against the smooth swell of her skin. She stroked his back, traced the shapes of him, as though she could touch his aching heart within and ease the tender muscle.

Heat leaked from the edges of his eyes and he whispered from his hoarse and aching throat into what his rational mind knew was surely his pillow. “Don’t leave, darling. Stay with me.”

**_Stay?_ **

“Yes, please, forever, forgive me I—”

**_Sleep, Eddie._ **

Edward woke into the grey, predawn winter light, his eyes aching, but his pillow dry. He lay on his back, looking towards the rafters. His mind buzzed with static misery.

At last he rubbed his face and looked towards the table. The jar remained, black substance and white eyes and all, but the creature appeared to be oozing from the top, threadlike tendrils emerging from the edges of the unseated lid. Immediately, Eddie sat up and made his way to the desk, lifting the circle of metal free and setting it aside. He brushed his fingers across the waving hedge and felt the creature coiling to explore him in return.

“Alright there?”

The creature bubbled and writhed, and made to climb out of the jar. He helped it, holding his hands out to catch it as it slid up and dripped over the edge of the glass. It dropped into his hands, soft and surprisingly dense, like a ball of bread dough. He brought it up towards his face and watched as the eyes reformed, a small tendril extruding from its mass and lifting them upwards like a midnight serpent. Gently he shifted it to one hand and ran a finger across the top of the newly formed cephalic protrusion, as he had sometimes done for Anne’s recalcitrant housecat. The creature’s rudimentary head waved as the charmed cobra and Edward found himself smiling.

Yet there still remained the quandary of what to do with the creature when Edward must venture forth to attend class. Would it be willing to remain in his room? Or was keeping it imprisoned thus any more humane than the person who had presumably confined it to the jar?

“What ever I am to do with you?” he addressed the creature, stroking at the spot between its eyespots and secretly delighting at the way the rough pools thinned and smoothed out into delicate lines. In the warming light from the window he could now see that they were not stark white as he had previously assumed, but coated in a faintly opalescent sheen, like milk mixed with thin petroleum. “I’m sorry to leave you shut up in a space barely larger than your last prison, but I fear I won’t very easily bring you with me.”

He was considering the idea of tucking the creature away within one of the great pockets of his overcoat when it reached for him, uncoiling and stretching towards his shoulder like one of the great serpents Edward had only seen in naturalists drawings, that traversed the trees in the deepest jungles. He tensed as it draped across his shoulder and coiled loosely about his throat. The trailing ends of its mass slid across his fingers, and he felt as it thinned and stretched, the dense doughy consistency of its form loosening and opening up into a soft weave. In a moment, the creature had formed the perfect famicile of a warm muffler, complete with a delicate hemmed fringe, like a piece of midnight sky sheared by some stitchwise goddess of the dawn.

Edward stared. Dumbfounded, he lifted the ends of the muffler and found them ordinary, with the heft and texture of common—if extraordinarily fine—fabric. His heart lurched strangely at the queer disappearance and he anxiously fingered the hem, wondering if he was not running quite mad.

But then the fringe laced his fingers, like a delicate hand reaching for his own, and his heart thudded back to life. No, this was definitely an irregular situation and not the result of a fevered brain. He petted at the trailing strands, and to his surprise, felt a faint surge of warmth running through the fabric, echoing in his chest. The same peculiar and comforting sensation as when he’d embraced Anne to him.

 _You must be a truly wretched creature,_ Edward thought of himself, _so starved that you would welcome any touch._

But he set aside the disquieting thought and donned his overcoat, doused the oil heater, and pocketed his key.

The streets of Arkham were barely more peopled at the hour of nine than they had been at six, but the grocer on Parsonage was open, and Edward stopped to purchase a packet of cigarettes. He set them atop the glass countertop, beneath which were entombed rows of brightly colored sweets, like the jewels of an ancient child king, and felt the creature wriggle faintly. He paused, considering.

“Anything for you, mister?” said the proprietor.

“Two bars of the chocolate, I think,” said Edward, and felt himself rewarded with a tingling ripple across the back of his neck. He smiled faintly.

“Got a lady friend, do we?” said the proprietor, opening the counter.

“I’m sorry?”

The proprietor gestured at a peeling paper calendar on the wall behind him, marked with scribbles indicating delivery dates and order numbers. “Tomorrow’s Candlemas, ain’t it? Valentines less than a fortnight away.”

“Ah.” Discomfited, Edward shrugged. “Nothing so pleasant I’m afraid. I’d forgotten the date.”

“Shame,” said the man blithely. “You need a good lass’s company on nights like this.” He winked at Edward.

Edward reddened and rummaged his pocket for the necessary change. “Quite.”

A few flakes of snow had begun to fall when he stepped from the grocer’s stoop and began the slow walk back up Parsonage towards Church Street, clutching the package of chocolate and cigarettes. His mood had blackened, and he found himself reluctant to return to the gaol of his rented room, so Edward passed the tenement house and wandered towards the church which he had glimpsed from across the street.

He was not seeking succor; it appeared a Protestant establishment anyhow, but Edward still found himself drawn to the forbidding oak doors, armored with iron bands that looked to have been hammered long before Edward’s grandfather was born. He could see from his position on the ground that the charred streaks on the steeple extended further than he had been able to spot from his window, dark arms entwining the white clapboard like the touch of some unwholesome imp.

Edward had just drawn within distance to see the deaths heads etched into the metal of the great handles, when the creature about his throat went into a frenzy. Startled, he came to an abrupt halt. His hands flew to the suddenly writhing article, but he realized after a panicked instant that it was making no attempt to strangle him. Instead it was wriggling like a desperate worm from the clutches of a robin, withdrawing to the far side of Edward’s body.

Almost as if it were putting Edward’s body between itself and the church.

Alarmed, he glanced nervously about the thankfully empty street as he made a concerted effort to retrieve the creature, even going to far as to open his overcoat in the freezing temperatures and coax it within. The creature’s shape dissolved, no longer holding the form of the muffler, and it burrowed like a blind thing, clinging to the buttons of Edward’s vest and shirt.

With a desperate look around them, Edward wrapped his coat about the shivering lump of amorphous matter and hurried back in the direction of the tenement house. Following one brief, hair-raisingly awkward encounter with Marion on the stairs, Edward stumbled back into the confines of his room, fumbled the lock, and sank back onto the bed.

Only then did he dare to open his overcoat.

The creature had shrunk itself to a trembling clot, tendrils anchored in the warp and weft of Edward’s clothing. His heart raced, tachycardic with fear, but here, shut away from the outside stimulus and the alarm of potential discovery, Edward came to a shocking realization.

The fear was not his own.

The fear was the creature’s.

Somehow, the strange being was feeding its terror directly into Edward’s brain, accelerating his heart and drenching him with sweat. The dissonance unbalanced him, and all he could think was that he must soothe it, or he might go mad.

Drawing in deep, slow breaths in an effort to force the obstinate organ in his chest into submission, he placed a gentle hand over the creature, nearly enveloping it behind the screen of his fingers.

The quivering mass quieted under his touch, and he stroked it, murmuring encouragement, making no effort to seek its head, but merely allowing it to seep and ooze between his fingers as it would. At last he felt the faint crawling sensation as it withdrew from the fabric of his clothing. The two eyespots rematerialized, peering up at him with trepidation.

At a loss, Edward dug in his pocket and struggled to unwrap the parcel of chocolate one-handed. The creature responded with much less enthusiasm than it had the previous night, but he nevertheless felt a trickle of warmth that he now recognized as gratitude.

Edward softened and offered up a small square. “You are most welcome. Think nothing of it.”

As he watched the creature devour the chocolate, Edward’s thoughts turned in new and disturbing directions. What was this creature? This strange aberration which had no form like any of God’s creations? Which displayed inexplicable fear of the church? Which Edward had discovered in a state of what could only be deliberate imprisonment?

_“It’s a rotten place, Arkham. A place stretched too thin, where the warp and weft of God’s Earth begins to tear, and all manner of ill creatures seep through.”_

Edward frowned in annoyance. Was he to assume this creature that loved chocolate and knitted itself into a scarf was some infernal messenger of Beelzebub? True it looked fearsome, but even a dog, that most faithful servant of man, could turn its teeth in rabid rage. He’d slept oblivious with it in its open prison not more than three feet from him. Surely the creature would have made some attempt to devour him by now, if it meant to do so?

Shaking his head at the fanciful notions this strange city was implanting in his brain, Edward finally rose and shed his overcoat. It was nearing dinnertime, and he made tentative, suggestive motions that the creature might release him so he could go and eat, which it proved quite reluctant to do.

“I know, I know, little darling,” he muttered, gently tugging at handfuls of it and coaxing it towards his pillow, “you’ve had a fright, but I can’t exactly wear a muffler to dinner, can I—”

He broke off as the creature abruptly liquified in his hands, spilling over his fingers like a black waterfall and reforming itself into a soft, black jacket, finely tailored.

Boggling, Edward held up the jacket. It looked perfect, down to the last detail, even including what appeared to be small brass buttons.

“I…” Edward turned the jacket over in his hands, trying in vain to soothe it. “Be reasonable. I shan’t be gone for long.”

The creature’s eyespots materialized on the lapel and it looked at him in most pleading fashion.

Edward sighed, and donned the jacket.

Dinner proved to once again be chicken pie, the scent of which perfumed the staircase like the labyrinthine thread of Theseus. Fearing Marion to be the type of mistress which might take offense at multiple instances of tardiness to her table, Edward hurried into the dining room and seated himself.

Harold, who was already seated at the table, looked up in greeting, and promptly choked on his soup.

“By God, man!” said Edward, alarmed. “Are you alright?”

Harold, who was groping for his water glass, had gone as white as a sheet.

“Where,” he gasped, when he could breathe again, “did you get that?”

Edward frowned. “Get what?”

“That jacket.”

Edward tensed. The jacket tightened across his shoulders.

His first instinct was to say that he had found it in his wardrobe, but something in Harold’s face held his tongue. Instead, he cleared his throat.

“It’s mine,” he said. “A birthday gift from my father.” The lie twinged, but for all his geniality, Harold was a stranger, and Edward did not trust the wide-eyed look on him. “Why?”

“I…” Harold swallowed hard and picked up his spoon with shaking fingers. “No matter. I thought only—never mind.”

They ate in tense silence, and Edward silently cursed the loss of their previous rapport. Beneath the concealing edge of the tablecloth, one of the cuffs of the jacket squeezed his wrist gently and he felt a twinge of sorrow from the creature.

After he’d finished his food, Edward excused himself, mumbling something about stepping out for a smoke. Harold’s comment arrested him at the door.

“Peter,” he said, and Edward went still. “Peter had a jacket...very like to that one. He must have purchased it in the same store in New York.”

The biting edge to the man’s tone belied his words. Edward tightened his lips and stepped out the back door.

The backyard was silent, the snow scratched and criss crossed in the moonlight with the tracks of the chickens that must be roosting in the listing henhouse against the far fence. Edward lit a cigarette and puffed a curl of smoke into the night air.

Restless, he crossed the yard to stand by the coop, peering over the edge of the fence into the street beyond. He caught a brief glimpse of a figure turning a corner, layered thick in overcoat and watch cap. From somewhere among the houses, he heard the faint sound of a phonograph on the wind, a familiar jazz piano and a man’s voice, like the scent of home and the city.

 

 _“...No one to talk with_  
_All by myself_  
_No one to walk with_  
_But I'm happy on the shelf_  
_Ain't misbehavin'_  
_I'm savin' my love for you…”_

 

Around him, the creature stirred in curiosity. Edward let out a rueful chuckle. “Do you like that? Music? Song?”

The enveloping shape rippled with interest. The sound had faded, but Eddie softly hummed a few bars, singing to the creature, to the quiet of the yard.

“I know for certain  
The one I love  
I'm through with flirtin'  
It's just you I'm thinkin' of…”

The upbeat melody raised the mood, which had marinated in the dismal depths since their fright at the church. The creature came slightly unspun from around him, touching the dips and curves of his ribcage and musculature as he sang, as if feeling the vibrations, reading his movements.

“Perhaps you’d like if I took you dancing at the jazz halls back at home?” said Eddie in half hearted amusement, taking a few, jesting steps in the snow. “We’re certainly dressed for it.”

A spark of alien joy unraveled in his brain, momentarily stealing his breath. He couldn’t put the creature’s response into words, but he tracked its ignition to the shape of his own, to _home_ and _we_ and _dancing_.

His heart hiccuped in his chest. A memory of Anne, laughing as she spun him around on the rug of the parlor floor, New York summer heat and the scratch of the phonograph needle. He traced curious fingers across the part of the creature which formed his sleeve and felt the fibers rise to meet him.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” he whispered, hardly daring to breathe. For an instant it seemed he teetered on a chasm of unfathomable strangeness, of fanciful imaginings of walking through the streets of New York clad in the creature’s strange embrace, awash in the familiar scents and sounds of his city.

Then from inside the coop came the drowsy cluck of chickens, capturing the creature’s attention and breaking the moment. Edward sighed, but welcomed the distraction. “You want a look?” he said softly, dropping his cigarette in the snow and quenching it. The lid of the brood box proved unlocked, and he gently fished beneath the rump of a sleepy hen, as the scullery maid had taught him, and drew out an egg. At his wrist, the jacket stirred and extruded a small piece of itself, familiar eyespots forming like spilt droplets of milk on the hem. The creature nosed curiously at the egg.

Inspired, Edward rummaged in his pocket for a match and struck it carefully against the tar paper roof of the coop. The match flared, and the creature retreated, but Edward hushed it and with great care, used the pinpoint of flame to candle the egg.

As he’d guessed, within he could see the floating curled shape of the unborn chick, folded in on itself like the man in the moon. The creature rose up, as if arrested by the sight.

Then that strange, toothy maw opened, unhinging like a snake jaw, and it snatched the egg from his fingers, swallowing it whole.

Edward jerked in shock, nearly responding in anger, but the burst of joyful relief in his brain staggered him. The creature was drunk with nourishment, the fulfillment of that abominable craving that turns even men at last into ravenous beasts. It swallowed the remains of the morsel and licked its chops, looking up towards Edward with a distinctly pleased air.

Edward stood stunned so long that his match burnt to the nub and he hissed in pain, dropping the lit ember to extinguish in the snow. Grumbling, he rubbed his burning fingers.

The creature extended itself, looping around Edward’s wrist and coiling to his hand. Edward flinched, half sure in the deep places of his brain that he was about to lose a limb. But the creature merely licked at his burned digits with its aberrant tongue, the slick tip flicking at the sensitive pads of his fingers. The pain flickered and died.

Edward’s breath hitched. The wet, strange appendage withdrew and the creature nuzzled at his fingertips. The night air was icy, but he felt suddenly warm, as though he’d sunk into a hot bath. The creature’s affection felt like heat coiled inside him.

Edward breathed plumes of breath into the frigid air, and returned to their room.

In the light of the burning kerosene, Edward touched the hem of the jacket, offering his hand, and felt the creature unravel around him, spilling into skeins like dark thread. He sat on the bed with it gathered in his lap, and wondered again at its origin. How it had so instinctively known to take the form of human vestments? And had Harold seen something of its like before, to react with such violent shock?

As if stirred by the troubled bent of his thoughts, the creature coiled itself against him, forming again that rough head and butting itself against his hand insistently. Edward rubbed at its slick skin and lifted the ball of shifting midnight. He paused, considering.

Should he return the creature to the jar? True it had remained within of its own volition, but was that not an indication of its harmless nature? A vague memory of childish comfort, of pressing his tearstained face into the velvet tabby coat of an indulgent housecat, tugged at the edges of his consciousness. To that end, he offered it—faintly shamefaced—his pillow.

The linens were aged, and of only middling quality, but the creature pooled upon the pillow with delight, shifting and coagulating like inky mercury. Edward petted it fondly, then rose to make ready for bed.

The sensation of shared weight upon the pillow was alien but somehow comforting. The creature oozed up and around him, a weight draped across his scalp and over one ear, blotting out the aching cold and solitude that seemed to soak Arkham to its very bones.

Edward’s dreams came in darkness, phantasmagoric projections that formed in the slippery, opalescent soap bubble between the waking and comatose brain. He dreamed he rode upon a black, infinite ocean of unknown depth and breadth. He dreamed of the skyline of his native city, cut like a paper famicile, held before the fire of its pulsing heart. He dreamed of his father. Of Father Shelnut. He dreamed of Anne.

In the dream he kissed her skin in blind darkness, touched her light frame. A mirage of all the imagined sensations and murmured words he’d meant to say in their marriage bed. Movement of unthinking instinct leashed and guided by sacred affection. Arms, thin and wirelike, wound round him, nails pricking at the flesh of his back like the teeth of a tiller in the earth from which God made Adam.

**_Eddie. My Eddie._ **

He whispered encouragements that he’d secreted away behind hot faced embarrassment, advice slyly given by mocking peers and elders. Stroked and cosseted and felt flowing flesh mold to his hands, part at his touch.

**_Eddie—oh!_ **

Indescribable, the sensation of entering, opening, of fitting together as he was meant to do, been shaped to do. Consummation, clinging pleasure, the drugging feeling of merging, two souls and one flesh.

_Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone._

**_Eddie...Eddie that feels...oh, Eddie, please!_ **

They called it the fall, the little death, and so he was falling, falling forever, shocked gasps of pleasure in his ears and furrows raked in his back, the primal sower, spilling seed in black earth while his darling clung to him, begged for him.

Edward woke the next morning to sun and the realization that he had sinned. For the Catechism had been burned into his blood and bones, etched by the assurances of the dozen, severe priests that had preceded Father Shelnut, and the warnings against nocturnal emissions had coated his ears in poisonous injunction. Mortified, he sprang from his bed, frightening the creature at its perch on his chest where it had presumably shifted during the night. It clung in startled panic and Edward squirmed to be free of it, whispering shameful apologies and excuses that he must make haste to the washroom.

It was then that his addled mind coalesced and clarified one strange and pertinent fact.

He was entirely dry.

Mystified and shocked from his gibbering, trained instinct of shame, Edward rubbed his hand through his hair and across the rough bristles of his jaw. Clearly his mind was playing some sort of cruel trick upon him.

The sun had risen above the hills that surrounded Arkham, turning the clapboards of the floor and walls a pale grey. Across the street, a church bell chimed.

The creature broke from its moorings on his chest like a shot, falling to strike the floor and scuttling footless out of sight beneath the wardrobe.

Still half-caught in bewilderment, Edward dropped to his knees to pursue it. The underneath of the wardrobe had been clearly overlooked for cleaning, and there was quite the colony of dust bunnies to be found. Coughing slightly at the raised miasma, Edward groped in vain for the creature.

“Hush, hush, it’s alright isn’t it? Nothing here that can—” The words died in his throat as his hand landed upon a distinctive form, tucked in the dusty shadows. A form which his fingers knew from years of repetition, fond and familiar.

The journal was a battered one, large, with a black and heavy cover. The pages were unlined, and sown with what even Edward’s unfamiliar mind recognized as chemical equations. A name was scratched on the inside cover in smudged graphite.

 

_Peter Parker._

 

A deep chill suffused Edward, drilling through his spine and up into the roots of his brain. This was the man of whom Harold and Professor Rice had spoken. Perhaps the lynchpin to the mystery of a missing graduate student and of Harold’s strange, lurking fear?

With some trepidation, Edward began to read.

Much of the pages were merely lab notes, descriptions of experiments, synthesis of chemical compounds, dates and times. But then, in May, there was a scrawled entry.

 

_Went for a walk near Hangman’s Hill this evening because could not sleep. The locals do not go outside on May Eve, as they call it, and shut their shops early, citing the sorts of superstitions would hope not to see in an ostensible center of learning, but there is naught to be done. Made note of rather fantastical noises coming from the hills and woods around the city last night, like as would think as the tremors of a quake, but felt no disruption. While walking back along the Miskatonic, spotted a most peculiar substance adhering to a bridge pylon. Appeared like to an oil spill, but far too viscous to be pure petroleum. Fortunate find of a pickle jar amongst the debris of the river. Gathered for further study._

 

_P.P._

 

Edward frowned, and read on. The next entry appeared dated in mid-June.

 

_Had to set aside the oil jar to finish project of quinine synthesis with H.O. Thankfully doesn’t seem to be oxidizing or peroxide-forming. Brought it in after hours to examine in the lab. Resisted sampling by pouring, pipetting, and cutting. Seems more a solid than a liquid. Molds easily and is of unusual density. Possesses a similar property to colloidal mercury in that it will draw back together when spread out. Most peculiar texture, like liquid fabric, pleasing to the touch._

 

_P.P._

 

Edward pawed his way through the pages, skipping over chemical diagrams of electron donation and acid hydrolysis. August, late in the month:

 

_After many manipulations, most peculiar event occurred. Had ripped jacket on cabinet corner—M.J. will be most displeased, indicated looks that one looks best—and laid it out on the bench while went to make coffee. Returned to find the substance had escaped from its dish and formed itself into the likeness of a jacket. Seams, buttons, tailoring, all identical, only color different. Donned the garment, no acute effects. Looks most fetching._

 

_P.P._

 

Edward boggled briefly at the page. Had Peter spent so many months studying the creature and been unable to detect its living nature? He skimmed through a few more pages, searching.

 

_Substance is a marvel. Does not attract dirt, impossible to tear, keeps toasty in the growing fall chill. If could replicate it and finalize SOP for converting it into other garments, would have core for fantastic dissertation. Might win Nobel Prize—imagine M.J.’s reaction!_

 

_P.P._

 

The entries, after this point, began to grow shorter, but more frequent, as September crept into October.

 

_Strange occurrence. Left jacket on back of the chair instead of in wardrobe because v. tired. Woke in the night and swore was absent. In the morning nothing had been disturbed._

 

_Forgot toast on table, surefire bait for mice. Untouched by morning, most peculiar. Marion commented mice are unusually absent considering the cold._

 

_Need to study less. Keep forgetting where left jacket. Found it draped across the foot of the bed, could swore put it in the wardrobe._

 

_Heard rumblings in the hills and woods all week. No rest. Lack of sleep not good for the brain. Could swear the jacket is haunted, found it on the pillow this morning._

 

_Something v. wrong with jacket. Texture repels. Wearing makes hair stand on end. Locked it in wardrobe and found it on the chair come morning. Hill noises worse than ever. V. bad feeling._

 

_Saw the jacket move! Woke after midnight to the hill noises and saw a great creeping shadow crawling across the ceiling like a miasmic cloud. Jacket absent from chair. Cried out and fell from the bed. Woke the whole house, H.O. stormed in with candle. Jacket was back on the chair. Writing M.J. but what to say? Fear madness._

 

Edward paused over the last entry, his breath shallow, heart pounding. It was written in such a looping scrawl to be practically illegible.

 

_Woke up with the jacket on! Nearly screamed aloud. It’s on me, in my head! Oh God in heaven it’s alive! Some abomination from the blackest depths of the cosmos. They were right about this Godless place! Filth seeps up from the dark drain of eternity. Hear the hill noises howling for me! Hear the steps in the alleyway, they follow, they follow, that cult of filth and pagan gods as old as eternity! Oh God save me, the church, the church—!_

 

Edward rocked back on his heels, staring at the page with a creeping sense of dread. Outside, dark was falling. He’d missed breakfast, but had no thought of eating. From beneath the shadow of the wardrobe, the creature’s pale eyes watched him.

Edward swallowed hard, then closed the journal, and set it aside.

“Come here,” he said.

The eyes shrank into the darkness.

“Here,” said Edward, firm. He held out his hands. “Please.”

Slowly, the creature emerged from beneath the wardrobe and allowed him to gather it up. Edward brushed an errant dust bunny from its head and looked at it seriously.

“Did you kill him?”

The creature cowered.

“Did you?”

A sharp sense of the negative, though colored with fear and shame. Edward nodded.

“So you frightened him. Hid from him because you were afraid?”

A flush of agreement.

Edward sighed.

“We’re going to the church.”

The creature recoiled, but he caught it, hushed it gently.

“We go to the church,” said Edward, quietly. “And we find out what happened. And then we can come home and have dinner. There’s still a chocolate bar.”

The creature seemed most displeased, but sagged into his hands in resignation. Rather than suggesting it form a garment, Edward donned his overcoat and coaxed it to cling to his vest.

East Church was a small Protestant establishment, the sort Edward could easily imagine being converted to a courtroom for witch trials. The doors were heavy, but unlocked.

The rows of pews cast long shadows and the rough floorboards creaked under Edward’s shoes. There was no altar to speak of, but beyond the pulpit, he could see the landing of a stairwell to the bell tower.

The stairs were tight, rickety, and made alarming noises as they ascended. The tower was drafty, slatted boards on all sides, and home to two stout bells. The creature tightened against Edward’s skin as they approached.

Edward stooped into the space and took a careful look around. The space was dusty but appeared empty, unused for storage. He walked the edges, searching for the spot he had seen from the outside, the black arms of soot.

The corner had been the source of the flames, and here and there Edward could see scraps of cloth that must have formed the accelerant before the fire had been doused. He crouched and touched the wood and felt the creature shiver.

Edward closed his eyes. “Tell me?”

Hesitation, and then, like a star bursting in his brain, information and emotion in a tangled flood, a river over-swelling its banks.

**_Darkness and cold flood in the river that bubbles up from where dark things sleep bright and warm and strange let be skin to skin didn’t know how it would feel didn’t know didn’t know never told, hated and afraid and ringing and ringing roaring pain tearing flesh and beloved hands wielding fire burning screaming rejection binding locked away expected death preferred it—_ **

Edward gasped, doubling over and clutching at his head, bracing against the waves of confusion and agony.

**_But you you you didn’t hurt fed when hungry kept warm when cold let us be close let us be us for a moment had us flesh to flesh and bone to bone gave in return warm and good and love Eddie Eddie Eddie—_ **

Edward froze, his mind racing. “I…slow, slow down a bit.”

The creature, no, not creature—a creature did not grieve, did not long, did not love—the _other_ quieted at last, bubbling to a halt in the roots of his brain. Eddie tried to breathe.

“I—that was a dream.” A dream of _Anne_ , surely. “We didn’t…”

**_Don’t understand, Eddie._ **

Edward groaned and hung his head in his hands. “I need to go to confession.”

And confess to what? He’d laid with a being from beyond the stars outside of wedlock? He’d be locked in a madhouse in a second.

**_What is wedlock, Eddie?_ **

“It’s...I can’t believe I’m explaining this to you, it’s getting married.”

**_And what is that?_ **

“It’s receiving a blessing before God, making a public statement that you are evermore one flesh, bound in sickness and in health, for rich or poor, as long as you both live.”

The other went very quiet at this.

**_A binding before god?_ **

“Er, yes, essentially. Why?”

**_...is why we came._ **

Eddie choked on his breath. “What?”

The other contracted into a smaller ball near his solar plexus, ruffling the folds of his clothing. **_...didn’t want to do that to Eddie didn’t want it before didn’t want afraid don’t want Eddie near them but if Eddie wants don’t know what to do…_ **

“Wait a moment,” said Edward. “What do you mean by _them_?”

Beneath their feet, the door of the church banged open; the other tensed.

**_They’re coming._ **

Footsteps on the floor. Edward looked about in alarm. He’d treed them quite neatly. “We need to get out of here.”

**_Jump._ **

“Are you mad?” Edward hissed. “It’s thirty feet to the ground. We’ll be killed!”

**_We must!_ **

Swearing, Edward bashed open a section of the slatted wood with several judicious kicks, chipping a hole through which he might squeeze. Footsteps on the stairs, several sets. Hunkering down, he started to wriggle through, half-thinking he might cling to the outside of the steeple and climb, but then rough hands grasped at his wrist and shoulder, endeavoring to drag him back through.

**_Jump!_ **

Cursing and writhing like an animal in a trap, Eddie twisted half round. He groped in his pocket for the only thing he had, striking out at his unseen attacker with Father Shelnut’s rosary, the point of the cross biting into yielding flesh.

His assailant released him with a shriek so loud that Edward thought his ears would bleed. And then they were falling, falling in darkness, Edward clawing for purchase, still clutching the rosary, a cry ripping itself from his own throat.

The other acted, lashing out and anchoring to the building just as it had done to Edward’s own clothing. It uncoiled as they fell, slowing their descent until it brought them to a jarring halt just a few feet above the ground.

**_I have us._ **

Edward found his feet, gasping. “Thank you.”

**_You are welcome. Now run!_ **

Edward took off down Church street, making for the university. The icy night air burned his nose and lungs, and the ground slid treacherously beneath his feet, but he stretched himself, thinking of the registrar's office, thinking of Professor Rice.

A cluster of figures appeared at the corner of Garrison and Edward cursed and veered north on Parsonage, hoping to circumvent them.

No good, another group, cutting them off, forcing them towards the river. Almost as if…

“They’re herding us,” Edward gasped. “But where?”

**_I know._ **

There was such bleak despair in the words they shook Edward to the core.

The bridge over the Miskatonic lay ahead of them. Edward summoned up his blood and pressed onwards.

“Come on,” he said. “There may be a driver going up the Pike.”

**_Not on this night._ **

The Massachusetts woods were dark and deep, the skeletal arms of the old trees that drank from the rich blood of the land around Arkham so dense they almost blotted out the moon-dark sky. Edward crested the top of a rise and from there he spotted the group of figures waiting for them.

“Where are they sending us?”

**_Into the woods._ **

“What’s in the woods?”

The other did not answer, but Edward felt it shrink. Edward curled his fists. There were too many to fight, but he could try.

Yet the figure at the head of the pack stepped forward and hailed him.

“Greetings, stranger!” shouted the man, his voice muffled by what Edward guessed was a kerchief or mask. “What brings you traveling through the woods so late?”

Edward worked his jaw. “Nothing which concerns you, I’m sure.”

“Oh I think it does,” said the man. “For you walk with an escort, don’t you?”

Edward squared his shoulders. “And what would you know of it?”

“Insolent meat sack!” shouted another. “Pipe down and show some respect!”

“The snows melt and the spring woods are hungry,” said the first.

The other tightened around Edward’s torso, then, to his shock, burst forth in a huge rope of inky black, coiling before Edward like a great anaconda.

 **_NO!_ ** ” It roared, and the infrabass blast of its voice nearly sent Edward reeling. “ **_The woods will find their blood elsewhere!”_ **

“All Their Praises and Abundance,” said the first speaker, seeming unperturbed. “But the woods are implacable. The choice has already been made. The Young have chosen, and the Lord of the Woods will feed.”

Despair broke over the other like a tidal wave. “ **_It was not intentional! He is not meant for this! We did not choose!”_ **

“A lie,” said the speaker. “You chose to remain with him, break bread with him, lie beside him. The red pulp meat of his heart is flush with you, child of the Black Goat. The choice was made.”

The other coiled back against Edward, grief-stricken. **_I am sorry, Eddie. Should have left me inside the jar._ **

“Stop it!” snapped Edward. “The way I’m hearing this, there’s a lot about choices and the woods and not a lot about how I fit in all of this. I don’t see how freeing someone from an untenable prison suddenly qualifies me to be sacrificed to some cult I’ve never heard of.”

“From the wells of night and the black gulfs of space,” intoned the speaker. “Ever the praises of Great—”

“And you shut up!” said Edward. He thrust forth the rosary, still wrapped around his hand, and was gratified to see the group step back as one. “I’ve drawn your blood already this night!”

The other lurched threateningly before them, though Edward did not miss the way it flinched from the touch of his hand which held the rosary.

“Then it seems we are at an impasse,” said the speaker. “For the woods must have blood, and one who has known the touch of the abyss may not return to the world of scrabbling men.”

Edward’s mouth drew tight, but he reached up and touched the elongate, serpentine jaw of the other, coaxing it to face him, as Lilith in the old painting which had hung in the private study of his father’s house. “What do we do, my darling?” he said softly.

The other shrank. **_A way out perhaps but—_ **

“Hush, I won’t hear of it. This is a bad business all around, but I’ll trust you as you trusted me.” Edward captured a trailing tendril and brought it briefly to his lips. “What do we do?”

**_We follow._ **

Edward straightened and addressed the lurking throng. “Let’s see your temple, priests of Baal.”

The speaker laughed. “Festivals in her honor occur this night as far afield as the moons of Yuggoth. The names of your pitiful gods will long be dust, boy, before the the ranks of her worshippers swell to full ripeness.”

Then the group closed around them and escorted them into the woods.

The dark canopy of bare branches bore witness as Edward and the other marched through the slush snow of the crumbling New England winter. Yet the dead woods seemed alive with the movement of shadows. Around them the tramp of hooves and a sound like swaying branches rose in discordant symphony.

The clearing to which they were led seemed an unwholesome merging of natural growth and deliberate manipulation, fallen trees thick with damp rot arranged in the shape of a crude altar. The speaker and his followers crowded Edward and the other to mount the structure, only withdrawing when the other hissed and struck a warning in the cold, night air.

It was then Edward saw they were surrounded.

Swaying in from the dead undergrowth, unholy amalgamations of force and flesh, great black ropes whipping about, gaping mouths like the maws of the creatures that traverse the space-cold depths of the ocean’s floor, dripping phosphorescent poison in trails to fill the hoof prints left behind them. Like the other in his arms, but huge. They lurched in around them, cold interest pressing down like the oppressive weight of snowfall. Edward shuddered, but steeled himself.

The other sprang up around him like the snake before the charmer. It hissed at the surrounding throng, buzzing speech like the rustle of fallen leaves threaded with the infrabass rumble of the bull alligator in the murky swamp.

“ **_Iä! Gof’nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath!”_ ** it snarled, **_“‘fhalma grah’n gotha athg ehye!”_ **

The watchers swayed in response, as though disturbed, and the other barked in warning again, repeating its eerie injunction. Those in human garb cried out, sending up a call of buzzing excitement: “ _Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!”_

The crowd seethed and broke around them as the dark surf of an endless black ocean. Voices, human and inhuman, gibbered and moaned. A cry from the darkness came: _“_ ** _Ilyaa gof’n_** ** _hupadgh grah’n!”_** The other coiled tighter around Edward.

 **_They say you carry the symbol of a heretic,_ ** said the other, morose and anxious. **_Eddie, I—_ **

Edward’s hand tightened on the rosary in blind instinct and he breathed deep. But he knew in that moment, the problem was not the cross.

“You spoke of a binding before God,” he said quietly. “Of pledging ourselves to each other?”

 **_Like a marriage?_ ** The other’s tone was strangely self-conscious.

“Gof’nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath,” murmured Edward, half to himself, the words awkward on his tongue, yet finally understanding. “A marriage in the Church. Is that what you meant?”

**_Flesh of flesh and bone of bone._ **

Edward nodded. He thrust the rosary up where it could be seen by the writhing masses, the silver cross dangling.

“I am a stranger in your lands!” he shouted, the clouds of his breath billowing into the chill. “But so we are taught to love the stranger. When your child came to me, a stranger with a wounded soul cast upon the waves, I showed them them kindness, and when they laid beside me and brought me succor, I vowed to do to them all which was required of me.”

Edward bowed his head. “But now I find the tables turned. I must entreat to remain, and whither your child goes, I will go, will lodge, will lie.” He breathed a sorrowful apology and cast the rosary into the darkness. “I have nothing but what you see, yet I will ask this of you.”

“The woods hunger!” howled one of the speakers. “Water them with blood and ask their favor!”

Edward offered the soft innards of his wrist to the other. “Will you?”

The other recoiled. **_I cannot—!_ **

“I would rather you than any other.”

The other moaned in grief, but sank the phosphorescent needles of its teeth into Edwards skin. Blood welled, and began to drip upon the altar logs. The watchers wailed. Edward gathered the other to him.

“We will make a place for ourselves, love,” he whispered against its slick skin. “Forge our own path. I swear it.”

The calling of the Great Old Ones is not a thing made for mortal eyes or mortal minds, and there were no words in Edward’s substantial vocabulary to describe the shapes and forces that burned his sight. The other threw itself around him, entwined them in a veil that blotted out the monstrous shadow that stretched itself over the dark woods. Edward knew only that the gaping, primal morass, the pathway of eternity from which the primordial springs, which is never meant to be trod in reverse, laid before them. He looked into the pale milk eyes of the other and smiled sadly.

“Are you ready, darling?”

 **_I love you, Eddie_ ** **.**

The kiss was misshapen, trembling and terrified, a human blessing to an inhuman joining. But kiss they did, as the darkness closed around them.

 

_From a letter to Ms. Anne Weying, received June 16th, 1929_

 

_To my dearest Anne,_

 

_I hope this letter finds you well. It is not my intention to cause you grief in sending this correspondence, but I shall be very soon be leaving for distant parts and may not be able to correspond at all. I wish only to convey my deepest apologies for the pain I caused you in the course of our engagement, and convey my congratulations on your impending match to the illustrious Dr. Lewis. I hope he makes you the happiest of women. Please find enclosed a modest token of my regards._

_You may be surprised to know I have recently wed myself. The match was rather sudden, but well suited. My darling is of a retiring sort, but I endeavor each day to bring them happiness. We are expecting our firstborn sometime next year. To think that our child will be able to see of the wider world brings me great joy, though the knowledge is made bittersweet that we will never be able to show them the beauties of Central Park, or take them up the great steps of the Metropolitan. Perhaps one day._

 

_Yours in friendship,_

_Edward Brock_

 

No more was seen or found of Edward Brock following that strange, February night in Arkham, though some of the locals said they thought they saw him once, walking the banks of the Miskatonic in the darkest hours of the night, clad in clothing of deepest black. The remains of his belongings were packed and mailed back to his father in New York, and the disappearance was marked down as unsolved, as was the custom in a city which knew better than to ask too many questions. Some thought the man had drowned himself in the river, beset by grief from a failed engagement, and that his ghost haunted the shores. Some thought he’d simply eschewed the idea of studying at Miskatonic University and left town.

But there were some, a few, who whispered of how Edward Brock had cleaved himself to a lost creature of darkness, won the heart of a child of a Great Old One, risen from beyond the deep places of the world, and even now traveled the cosmos, crossing the lines and walls of space, walking the angles of the poles, winging his way past the moons of Yuggoth, reshaped, and reborn, and renamed. A name whispered by those who waited for the Great Dreamer, and those who sought the Gate. A name of malice and poison repurposed, sometimes found scratched in claw-hewn glyphs upon artifacts which made their back to the Earth, or carved upon risen icebergs of Cyclopean masonry, as though intended as a message for the frightened masses, who huddled within their pastoral fields and metal and concrete jungles, listening for the breaking of the cosmic storm:

_For we are Venom._

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes on the text (because I did entirely too much research for this):
> 
> 1) Father Shelnut is supposed to be the unnamed priest from the Costa comics run. I named him after the character in _John Dies at the End_ , which holds the dubious honor as my favorite piece of Lovecraftian fiction.
> 
> 2) If you happen to enjoy maps, you can find the map of Arkham MA which which I used when constructing the story and when figuring out what direction Eddie and the symbiote were running [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkham). Professor Warren Rice (himself a character borrowed from _The Dunwich Horror_ ) makes a comment that nobody would want to live on the corner of Parsonage and Pickman. You'll note this location on the map is marked as Witch House, itself the star of yet another story about a man who moves into a haunted attic. |D
> 
> 3) The song which Eddie sings to the symbiote is [Ain't Misbehaving by Fats Waller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_Misbehavin%27_\(song\)), which was recorded in 1929, a little later than I actually set the story, but I liked the lyrics and wanted to use an actual song from the time, as Sinatra wouldn't start his career until the 30s. You can listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vaQoPSBMQA).
> 
> 4) I based the core conceit of this story on a concept introduced to the Cthulu mythos by Ramsey Campbell in his story "The Moon Lens", [Gof'nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath](https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Gof%27nn_hupadgh_Shub-Niggurath), in which worshipers of Shub-Niggurath can be transformed into monstrous beings and gifted with immortality. As far as I could determine, it roughly translates to "children born of Shub-Niggurath".
> 
> 5) I actually did [make an attempt at construction](http://www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/R'lyehian) of the R'lyehian speech that the symbiote uses in the story. I can't speak to the "accuracy" or the grammar because holy hell Tolkien this man was not, but roughly speaking, "fhalma grah’n gotha athg ehye" translates to "mother lost one/larva wish sign (contract)/agree to cohesion/integrity". Essentially it's the symbiote telling the others to back off because it's going to ask its mother for permission to bond with Eddie. Whereas "Ilyaa gof’n hupadgh grah’n” says nothing about heresy, but _actually_ translates to "expect/await child born of lost one/larva". Basically the symbiote's siblings are calling it out for getting knocked up by Eddie. xD If Lovecraft wanted to canonize the idea that the Outer Gods could reproduce with ordinary human beings, I figured why not?
> 
> And thank you for reading! This has been a wild ride from start to finish, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you to Frankie and Corpus for their beautiful art and to the kindly people who betaed the fic and helped it put its best foot forward.


End file.
